"Affordability has its trade-offs"

Pros:
1. Very affordable neighborhood for singles or starting families looking to be in the prime school district in the Peoria area (Dunlap School District 323).
2. The neighborhood (Miner’s Drive and Jubilee Lane) is somewhat isolated from main traffic arteries. The area is quiet after 8:00pm.
3. Bike paths and two small parks are available within a half-mile radius
4. Retailers are available within five minutes of the community

Cons:
1. The neighborhood is transient...a lot of single-family homes are no longer occupied by their owners. 2. The street has become a babysitter for non-neighborhood kids. 3. The HOA is inept to enforcing its own covenants and bylaws.

The rest of this review will elaborate on the summary points above.

This neighborhood was a great place to live before 2007. I lived on Jubilee Lane between Q3 2005 and Q1 2010. I paid the annual dues to the homeowner’s association and arguably had one of the five best maintained properties on Jubilee Lane. The neighborhood was a safe and quiet place to live until about Q2 2007 (more on this below). The neighborhood is reasonably priced for this area of the city. It is in the Dunlap (323) school district, which is inflating home prices for this neighborhood and surrounding area.

The decline of Jubilee Lane started when tenants started occupying the homes in the neighborhood in early 2008. The house next to mine was tenant-occupied since 2005, but the landlord was very selective and the house always had quality tenants: Peoria Rivermen hockey players in 2005-2006, a doctor and his family in 2006-2007. When the landlord sold the house next to mine in late 2007, a nice family moved in shortly thereafter. That same family moved out in early 2008 for a job transfer, and a new family rented the house from them. This is when the decline effectively started…three teenage kids and two unruly, ankle-biting dogs now occupy the property. The parents do not discipline the kids, so they leave toys and garbage throughout the lawn. The dogs are left in their kennel for 8+ hours on the weekends. The kennel is not permitted by the HOA (more on this below).

Tenants occupy other homes on Jubilee Lane. They have little incentive to maintain properties and it shows in the form of poorly maintained lawns (one neighbor across the street had over 10” of grass throughout the summer of 2009), non-conforming fences, and old vehicles sitting on driveways. All of this dilutes property values for the real homeowners of the neighborhood.

A lot of young teenage kids loiter at the 2400 – 2414 area of West Jubilee Lane. The kids run around in people’s yards, damaging landscapes and lawns. They also ring doorbells and run away, disturbing residents late at night. A lot of these kids do not even reside in the neighborhood. Parents from outside of the neighborhood will drop their children off at the corner of Jubilee Lane and Copper Drive to play with resident’s kids. Friday and Saturday nights are loud since there can be over 40+ children running through and destroying people’s property. There are times when the kids are out past city curfew.

All of the issues described above are easily enforceable by the HOA’s covenants, yet nothing is done for the residents of the neighborhood. The HOA is a prime example of inept governance. Residents of Jubilee Lane are paying $100/year in dues, which has been increasing at a rate of $25/year since 2005. As a resident of this neighborhood, you will experience the concept of “taxation without representation”: the HOA will collect dues only to turn a blind-eye when it comes time to enforcing the bylaws and covenants to which you must conform. On two occasions I reported issues with my neighbors’ disturbances which were clear violations of the covenants (kennels on the property, and excessive noise at night), only to have my issues deflected to the tune of “it is not our issue, call the city”.

In conclusion, there are other neighborhoods in the Dunlap school district that you should consider living in. While the price range of homes in this neighborhood is attractive for young buyers, there are risks to living in this neighborhood: if you have kids, they will not develop well since the existing teenagers in the neighborhood are ill-mannered; if you like a nicely maintained property, it will be compromised by kids tramping throughout your yard and destroying your landscape.